“MAXIMAL LIFE” — all caps. Two words that don’t denote much of anything, but nearly buckle under the weight of what they connote. Splay them across the galactic banner of your Soundcloud account as this Israeli producer does, and they suggest bustling time-lapse videos set to commercial post-rock; stock images of triumphant mountain climbers with arms outstretched; monosyllabic slowly whispered with emphasis on their fricative consonants.
lifffffe…
With those connotations in mind, I think MAXIMAL LIFE’s name is pretty well-chosen. On the surface level, their heaving deconstructed club soundscapes suggest the body-high of an EDC DJ set as well as a particularly moving commercial for a local community college. But, of course, there’s plenty of real soul beneath the veneer of millennial self-aggrandizement.
“אוי לא! | OY LO!,” their latest upload, hides this emotional core deep within its Matryoshka doll of genre-swaps. In just 4 minutes, the track rearranges itself into an EDM drop, a scorched piano ballad and a gruff emo-trap banger without sacrificing flow or cohesion. It’s Hannah Diamond and Sigur Ros, both at the same time.
“I live on the concrete threshold of a dream.” // “I’m perfect until I have no dick ”
The duality of man.